[iammisc]

That's because America is defined by its cultural pluralism. When you have cultural pluralism, welfare does not work as well, because you are now taking money from members of one culture and giving it to another, and the cultures may be at odds with each other.

For example, i am a conservative Catholic. You can tax me sure, and spend it on welfare for atheists who love abortion (or whatever other group... just making up a culture I have little in common with), but then I, and others like myself, will want to have opinions on how my money is spent. If you didn't take my money, I wouldn't care.

A lot of strife over welfare in this country is due to the fact that we hold several cultures that are at odds with each other. For example, the amish don't like war, yet they pay taxes. If you asked the amish, they'd vote against war, but conveniently, they are outnumbered, so their money is co-opted. If the amish believed in protesting, and making a big fuss, this would be a major issue. Luckily for the powers that be, they don't. Ultimately, the more government programs / spending one has in a pluralistic society, the more civic strife there will be. This is unavoidable

[what_is_orcas]

Hey how do you reconcile your beliefs about Jesus with your stance on welfare for non-christians?

I'm just curious and I don't know any conservative catholics in real life.

[mbg721]

In my area, the St. Vincent de Paul Society provides help with food, housing, and other needs in the community regardless of the recipient's religious inclination.

Catholics are encouraged to donate to them and volunteer their time, and there's usually a once-a-month supplemental collection for them at Mass.

[iammisc]

Catholics are called to provide charity even to non-christians, so there is no fundamental reason to only provide for our own community.

However, welfare and taxation is not charity and you do not grow in virtue through taxation. Welfare is meant to keep a good society. As catholics we have responsibility to vote (if we live in a democracy) for policies that form a just society (this is the original meaning of social justice before it was co-oped by the woke). There is no fundamental conflict between providing for non-christians here, as they too may fall on hard times.

Sorry... were you trying to get at something here?

[what_is_orcas]

No, I am & was just genuinely curious.

And I am now curious about your beliefs that conservative politics will lead to a just society.

[iammisc]

> And I am now curious about your beliefs that conservative politics will lead to a just society.

Of course not. Politics will never lead to a just society. There is no such thing as 'conservative' politics; or at least, such a thing is not advocated for in the United States. This is because most 'conservatives' are united not in any particular vision of the country but rather by what the country should not be. This isn't to say that individual factions don't have clear ideas of how society should be; just that no faction predominates. With that aside, by most meanings of 'conservative', it is used to mean limited government, little welfare, lower government spending, and policies encouraging social conservatism. Yes, I am broadly in support of these things.

On its own however, these things will not lead to a just society.

You need both conservative politics and a moral society to achieve a just society.

Unfortunately, the government cannot create a moral society. That is up to individuals to accomplish. We cannot vote on society being good. Many individuals in the united states view their only obligation to politics and the community is via voting and government. This is the worst take ever imaginable. After one votes, after one protests, after one calls their senator/representative, there is yet more to be done for community. Most people do not ever get to this level. It's not just volunteering to help those who are of a different class than you. No no no... that's the uninteresting part of civic duty. The interesting part is what you do for people like you. Do you spend time making your friends worlds a better place? What about your family? Do you make sure your friends and family aren't falling into destitution? Those things are the intangibles that no amount of voting or politics will ever fix, when a culture is broken.

For example, many liberals want universal child care paid for via public money. I don't think this is a good thing because I don't think children should be raised by businesses. They should be raised by their parents (they should be educated by them as well, in the early years at least) and their families.

In order to achieve this goal of having more parents stay home with their children, we both need to not have universal child care (should probably severely rethink public schooling too), as well as create a society that understands that parents staying home is the right thing to do, and thus does not do it. The first part is easily governmentally achievable; the second part is not. Although it's true that our current society incentivizes both parents working, there is no fundamental reason they have to (other than most people's desires for more material goods). Many subcultures in America achieve a one-income family (Amish, many evangelicals, many conservative Catholics, etc).

As another aside, I give thousands of dollars to direct action charities. I have no problem with this and would like to give more. Yet, I would resent if government took this money and instead used it, preventing me from giving it to those in need. In a lot of countries with more welfare, the people themselves become less charitable, because any social problem they expect someone else to fix. Those who fall behind anyway are looked at as failures. Far from forming community, welfare atomizes society. Thus, I am very suspicious of government welfare. Better for it to come from individuals. Tax breaks to encourage charity are fine, and better, indeed.

So no, I don't think conservative politics will achieve anything other than not directly incentivizing people to do bad. Fundamentally, I'm conservative because I want the freedom to do good.

[what_is_orcas]

I appreciate your thoughtful answer, though I do not agree with your beliefs (to the extent that I think your beliefs are not only not-good for society but actually harmful for society).

[mbg721]

Given that I am also a conservative Catholic, there are plenty of things to wrestle with here.

One is that we're engaged in our own internal culture-war around liturgy, the dwindling priesthood, and what to do about social issues that pit Western society's priorities against long-standing Church doctrine. When the most prominent Catholics in the news aren't acting Catholic, that drives us crazy.

But I don't think pluralism is really the problem; Catholics, at least in America in my lifetime, never had any kind of puritanical control. The problem is that there's a new amorphous religion of the state that insists it doesn't exist.

[iammisc]

Pluralism is not a problem, because civic disagreement is not a problem. I was responding directly to the parent comment:

> It's America--everybody thinks everybody else is living their lives the wrong way.

I'm explaining why it is that others think they are living the wrong way.

> One is that we're engaged in our own internal culture-war around liturgy, the dwindling priesthood, and what to do about social issues that pit Western society's priorities against long-standing Church doctrine. When the most prominent Catholics in the news aren't acting Catholic, that drives us crazy.

Absolutely, and it's because the church in America is splitting into two cultures. On one hand, there are catholics who want to be American, and fit in with secular society. On the other hand, there are those who don't see it as that important. These two groups have different cultures.